Status Quo

I was sitting on my cozy love seat with a glass of sparking red wine and a plate full of mozzarella sticks and sausage rolls enjoying the company of my sister and My Beloved as the final seconds of 2006 slipped away. It was nice - quiet and comfortable (at my age ringing in the new year needs to be quiet and comfortable for me to be interested in doing any ringing in at all).

It was the perfect way to usher in 2007 and I went to bed with the warm feeling you get when you've spent happy time with people you love.

But New Year's Eve has always made me a little sad - even before I had anything to be particularly sad about. There's something about an entire year ending that makes me nostalgic for the past - and a little afraid of the future.

And now along with the nostalgia and fear, I feel a sort of uncomfortable panic about moving so far away from Thomas. I mean from the physical part of him. Being pregnant, giving birth, holding my son.

All that happened in 2004 and 2005, and with the turning of yet another year it seems so far away. Like I'm racing away from all that I knew of him - which wasn't much at all to begin with.

Panic indeed.

So much of what I do is done with him in mind and only senility will rob me of memories of his existence, but time is pulling me away from those sweet months when I felt him alive inside me and when I held that precious bundle in my arms. And it makes me want to claw my way back in time to be closer to the him I knew.

That might sound a little crazy, but there it is. This is my second New Year's experience since he died and it appears that this is just the way it is.

Like Christmas visits in the cemetery and watching other children grow while he rests with the angels. That's just the way it is.

Okay, bit of a morbid first post of the year, but why should this Monday necessarily be any different from any other Monday? It is what it is. And I keep on keeping on.